Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Notice that comments are disabled on this post (but not others). Someone probably was publishing comments criticizing State regulation of the food industry.

That's a common trick on mainstream media websites. If people publish comments that contradict their lies, then they disable the comment section.

"Food safety" laws are a type of tax. They're designed to impose extra costs on small businesses. Food safety laws make it illegal for someone to bootstrap a restaurant business, working out of their home kitchen.

I have no idea if he was targeted because he had an unsafe kitchen, or if he was competing too successfully. It's probably the latter.

4 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Yeah, I've seen comments being disabled on some UK newspaper websites. You can tell why they are doing it, because only certain articles have comments turned off and those articles tend to be able certain parts of government or really bad things.

Absolutely, the comments issue is huge. I sometimes find a forum on a topic I am interested in and notice the strangest thing - everyone in the comments has the same perspective, and obvious other perspectives are missing. Sometimes I will post a test post with a contrarian position just to check, and sure enough, the message is never approved. When a site has community commenting enabled but then deletes all messages contrary from the approved viewpoint, it is not community but cult.

Usually I am right there with you, but.....I don't think your shorter than usual post paints an accurate picture of the scenario. The full story was linked in the link you provided. http://fort-greene.thelocal.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/cake-man-raven-closed-by-health-department/

Apparently his water was shut off, and the employees couldn't flush the toilet or wash their hands. It was the last straw after the guy wasn't paying them on time for months, and they raised a stink about it. Frankly, I'm not sure I would want to eat a cake there under those circumstances.

I have a story about food safety bullies. There is a small sandwich place near my house that is the model of what fresh veggies should look like on a sandwich, and although the place is cramped in there behind the counter for sure, it is clean and fresh as can be. A city tree root poked into a sewer line, causing his sink to back up. When he called to get the city out there, the guy that showed slapped a health violation paper on his door (and did nothing else), and the poor guy had to hire a plumber himself just to fix the problem in a reasonable time so he could reopen. Oh, and he also got dinged for a mop bucket too close to the grill as well. That will teach him to call the city!

P.S. If you get an email saying that you need to reset your blogger password or something, I am really sorry, but that was me. I was trying to reset this google comment account and I guess I got lost and clicked on the wrong section. Once again, sorry:(

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Personal Finance

For personal finance, my most frequently visited site is Yahoo Finance. Yahoo Finance has the best system for watching your stock quotes during the day. I also like the Motley Fool. Both of these websites encourage you to do independent thinking about finance.

My favorite discount online broker is Vanguard. They are not the cheapest commission-wise, but their customer service has been excellent. Plus, they give a high credit interest rate on the cash portion of your account.

Mises, Rothbard, and Austrian Economics

The school of "Austrian Economics" advocates credit-based money instead of debt-based money. There are two separate websites, www.mises.org and www.mises.net. These philosophies are a precursor to agorism. However, they still hold out false hope that the people who control the government can be convinced to switch to a fair monetary system. They fall short of the correct conclusion that government itself is the problem.

The Mises and Austrian school is still a pro-State theory of economics. They say "government should adopt a sound monetary policy instead of an unsound monetary policy". They fall short of the truth, which is "Who needs a government?"

Agorism and Anarcho-Capitalism

The primary source most commonly cited is agorism.info. Agorism.info has good introductory material, but I'm already looking for more advanced topics. I also found TOLFA interesting. The Molinari Institute has a lot of interesting links.

The source with the most advanced material on agorism is Kevin Carson's The Mutualist Blog.

This link on the History of Money has a lot of interesting bits on how bankers have controlled the world's money supply for hundreds of years or longer. Unlike most other sources, it is very short and to the point. However, their recommended solution falls short of true agorism.

Freedomain is another good read. He doesn't update his blog often, but he has a lot of good stuff posted in the past.

Kevin Carson's Mutualist Blog - This is a great source. He is tough to read at times, but his content is great. He's the best source on agorism I've seen. I like to take his topics and present them in simpler language. He updates his blog sporadically, but he has a lot of great content. It's also worth reading his other books and articles, which are available from his mutualist.org website. I also like the way Kevin Carson frequently links back to his favorite older posts. Kevin Carson's Shared Items is also worth reading; it's a list of posts from other blogs that he finds interesting.

Kung-Fu Monkey. This blog is written by someone who works as a writer in the entertainment industry, which explains the high quality of writing. He sounds like a closet agorist, although he hasn't specifically mentioned that philosophy. This post on the Extrapolated Everyday Bull**** Comparison has promoted Kung-Fu Monkey from my hitlist to my "read regularly" list.

Redpillguy's Blog - His blog is relatively new, so it's hard to judge. He doesn't really update his blog that often. On the other hand, he frequently cites my content, and that's certainly the sort of thing I appreciate.

Tranarchism is another new blog. It's too soon to judge the content. On the other hand, anyone who heavily cites my stuff can't be all bad. It's too infrequently updated.

Wally Conger's Blog is another good read. However, he really has two separate blogs mixed together. He has a lot of good stuff on agorism and libertarianism. However, he also likes to talk about his favorite movies and TV shows a lot.

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Honorable Mention

These blogs have some interesting content, but they don't make it into my regular reading rotation. If they improved their content or improved their posting frequency, then they would be in my regular reading list. I check back occasionally, and on a slow day I might read them.

Bill Rempel - He talks about finance and trading. He really dislikes the Federal Reserve. I'm not sure if he's come all the way to agorism yet, but perhaps he can be coaxed. He's guilty of my #1 blog pet peeve: A PARTIAL RSS FEED!

Bored Zhwazi - Has some nice content, but it really isn't updated that often. It's worth checking back once every month or two.